Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Monday, April 29 disappointment.

Although this may be a wonderful place to visit at certain times of year and although I'm not saying I'd NEVER winter here as a snow bird, so far The Texas Gulf Coast is not in the running for retirement living for the Castle's.  There are many reasons, prime being the weather and humidity.  Another is prices and cost of living here and the third is that we don't speak Spanish and don't plan to learn, this is the United States of America, we speak American English here.  Some of the Hispanic people we've met here have been wonderful and treat us just like their friends or neighbors, but the majority, who either don't or won't speak English, won't even give us the time of day in restaurants and/or stores.  I'm not prejudiced, in general, in fact my Daughter-In-Law and 2 of our grand children are part Hispanic and I get along fine with her family.  I also have a former Sister-In-Law who is Hispanic and hardly spoke a word of English when she joined the family, but she always had a smile on her face and a kind word to say to anyone within her sphere.  We still have Corpus Christi to experience, but since it's in the middle between Galveston Island and South Padre Island, I suspect our opinion isn't going to change much.

But, that isn't the Monday disappointment.  There was an advertisement that was nicely done for a "Sea Life Center" at Port Isabel (just across the big bad bridge to SPI), LOL.  Since we are such ocean/sea lovers, we decided to visit.  It would be a good donation ($3.00 per person) and should make for an interesting hour or so. . . so we thought. . . We were wrong.  It was very amateurish, in our opinion.  Our kids were both in 4-H and had exhibits at the McLean County Fair and this place reminded me of something that would have been done for a 4-H exhibit, although we would have never accepted such poor workmanship of our kids (we were pretty demanding of high performance where our kids were concerned).   Most of the "containers" were just large "water troughs" and the pictures of people handling the creatures didn't happen, at least while we were there.  It was also supposed to be things found in the area and several of the exhibits were not even from the Gulf of Mexico, let alone local.  So although we did take some pictures, we were out of there in about 15 minutes and were very disappointed.  


 The poor seahorse on his side at the surface desperately needed an air bubble released from his brood pouch (yes, I said HE, seahorse MALES brood the young and give birth to them).  He will probably die because he can  not eat this way, he can't stay upright and off the surface of the water.  That made me feel very sad.
Some pipe fish, in with the Sea Horses.


 This iguana was a released pet that almost froze one winter, so he was rescued and spends his days here where at least he's being taken care of.

Do you remember the skate case we found last year at Gulf Shores, Alabama?  This is the critter that would have hatched out of that egg case.

Very blurry picture of the skate and a puffer fish, because it was a round water tank and they were by the water intake valve, so the water was moving.

That's it. . . I didn't bother to take any of the aquarium pictures or labels because I didn't think they were worth taking pictures of.

We suspect this was the case of a family with aquariums or things they collected and wanted to keep (we've done that before, no complaint there) and they decided they could make a few bucks off their endeavors if they opened their "collection" to the public.  I will give them credit, though, that the tanks etc. were all clean and the animals appeared to be well fed and as well taken care of as the people knew how to take care of them.  It's just my opinion, if you are going to keep animals like this you need to know all you possibly can about them (such as the seahorse situation).  There is a fix or cure and I was saddened to see that they either didn't know or weren't able to solve the problem.

So, after leaving the Sea Life Center we drove back towards Brownsville to visit a huge gift shop we had seen on the way in.  It was in the middle of NOWHERE but it was big and flashy and I wanted to go there, LOL.  This is what it looks like from down the road.
Here are some close up pictures from the outside of the store.  Inside it was just like any other Shell/Tourist trap gift center.  We wandered through the store, did NOT take Bobz World's 30 minute guided tour and actually left without buying a single thing, LOL.






It was really something, LOL, I'm not sure what, but it was something. . . Then we came back to camp, took a walk down by the bay (Everybody sing along now. . . Down by the Bay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go, 'cause if I do, my mother will say, . . .) sorry, a bit of ADD kicked in there, LOL.  I'd love it if you'd leave a note in the comments telling me whether you sang along or not, LOL.  We watched the water for awhile and then came back to the Big Sky for the night.  This wasn't much of an interesting post, I know, but I hope you'll return to join us for the rest of the adventures.  Smiles, Sue C


1 comment:

  1. Doesn't sound like this is going to rank up there with your best trip. Enjoy what you can. I love you, Gail

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